THE BUSINESS TRAVEL MAGAZINE I 39 The Review ➔ Carry on carrying on…
Lucky pants, indecent proposals, Cornish pasties and burger & chips – welcome to The Business Travel Magazine's Alternative News page!
THE average value of a business traveller’s carry-on luggage comes close to a startling £1,500 – but The Business Travel Magazine has proof to the contrary. Research by
Hotels.com showed
the average business traveller has 12 items with them in their carry- on bag, including must-have items such as laptops, notebooks and pens. However, a quick survey of The Business Travel Magazine's staff revealed a different picture, with the average value of their hand luggage registering a mere £31.14. Check-out the tables to the right to see how they compare. Alison Couper, communications director at
Hotels.com, says, “Today’s business traveller is working harder than ever before and wants to be as ready and able to do their job when they are on the move as they are in the office.” Meanwhile, David Clare, publisher
of The Business Travel Magazine, says, “I don’t know how they got hold of my bag without me noticing, but this is clearly a good illustration of cutting costs where savings are there to be made. It’s been a tough couple of years for everyone, but no-one can afford to travel without their lucky pants.”
THE ALTERNATIVE NEWS
VIRGIN CREW ATTEND TO BARBIE'S NEEDS
“CAN I have a cup of tea and book a massage for my Barbie doll?”, said the passenger to the air stewardess. That is just one of many outlandish questions to have been posed by passengers onboard Virgin Atlantic flights. A list recently published
by the airline also included requests such as “is there a McDonald’s onboard?”, “please take my children to the playroom” and “please can you turn the engines down because they’re too noisy.” The aforementioned Virgin
HOTELS.COM CARRY-ON BAG INDEX Apple iPad (£699)
BlackBerry 9800 (£464.95)
Mont Blanc Rollerball pen (£230) Adaptor plug (£3.99) The Economist (£2.00)
Sure roll-on deodorant (£1.69) TBTM MAN-BAG INDEX
Nintendo Gameboy (£9.56, ebay) Motorola DynaTAC 8000x (free)
Moleskine ruled notebook (£15.00) WHSmith Reporter's notebook (£1.99) Travel pillow (£5.99)
Teddy bear (hand-me-down) Bic black biro (£0.49)
Fujifilm disposable camera (£3.99) Heat magazine (£1.65)
Colgate Total Toothpaste (£1.45) Wrigleys Spearmint gum (£0.59) Oral B toothbrush (£2.99)
Bag of pick ’n’ mix (£0.69) Old Spice deodorant spray (£2.19)
M&S pure cotton non-iron shirt (£25) Primark easy-iron shirt (£9.99) M&S lambswool socks (£10) TOTAL: £1,462.06
Lucky pants (priceless) TOTAL: £31.14
CALORIFIC HIGH-FLYERS
IN A BID to outdo Travelodge’s word count across previous issues of this particular page, Skyscanner has issued a glut of generally useless surveys in recent weeks. Our favourites, though, get to grips with the tough topics of high altitude flirting and airport catering. Keeping an eye on the nation’s waistline, Skyscanner has revealed the shocking calorie counts of some popular airport meals and snacks, with an
old-fashioned
burger and chips from O’Neills tipping
the scales with a whopping 1,700 calories. A Cornish pasty from the West Cornwall Pasty Company weighs in at 1,040 calories, a roast dinner from Wetherspoons at 877, and a cheese and ham sandwich from EAT at 708. Even a coffee from Caffe Nero can contain up to 424 calories. In another survey, Skyscanner
has coined a phrase almost as objectionable as ‘staycation’ or ‘glamping’. ‘Flyrting’ is the new term it uses to describe flirting among passengers, a practice which it claims 45 per cent of people happily admit to, while 95 per cent of those surveyed confess they'd like to join the mile-high club. At least it might work off some of those excess calories.
DRAGON SLAYERS
MAKE sure you’re free on Sunday 10th July, for that's the date of the third annual Dragon Boat Racing and Family Fun Day, hosted by The Business Travel Magazine and the Institute of Travel & Meetings. The venue is once again The Oakley Court Hotel in Windsor. For more information or to enter a team, email:
david.clare @
bmipublishing.co.uk
RAINBOW RAFFLES
INSPIRED by the charity raffle at The Business Travel Magazine’s Christmas party, the travel team at HSBC decided to hold a raffle of its own, with proceeds of over £750 going to The Rainbow Trust. “We received a large number of Christmas gifts from our generous suppliers and we wanted to ensure that they found a good home and do some good too,” says Lee Whiteing, HSBC’s UK travel and fleet manger. “This year we sold raffle tickets to employees at £1 per ticket. I was hoping we'd raise around £100 but we were absolutely staggered by the response and in less than three days we managed to raise over £750 thank to the organisational skills of my assistant, Fay Gallagher.”
staff recently took the accolade for ‘most attractive cabin crew’ following a survey of male and female business travellers in February. Virgin Atlantic received over half the vote, with Singapore Airlines, Etihad Airways, Emirates and Aer Lingus completing the top five.
50 I THE BUSINESS TRAVEL MAGAZINE
46 I THE BUSINESS TRAVEL
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